I was going to write a review of the film Never Let Me Go, but the first half-hour of the film featured a scene that distracted me so badly that I’m going to mainly talk about that instead. There are some premise spoilers ahead, though nothing I hadn’t already heard before watching the film.

Never Let Me Go is science-fiction, but it’s “light” science-fiction, which means the science-fiction is really just the backdrop, rather than the center, of the film. The film wants to tell a story about people, and doesn’t try to or need to explain the sci-fi stuff. Unfortunately, I’m the type of person who really does need that stuff explained, as I’ll detail below.